


The dead are gone and the living are hungry

by orphan_account



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV), The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, smut happens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-11 22:33:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7910152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dead walk amongst the living. Clarke Griffin finds it hard to see anything more to life than just surviving when she has lost so much. Alicia Clark finds the zombie apocalypse hasn't changed her life as much as she would expect. Eventually they find each other.</p><p>or </p><p>The Zombie Apocalypse AU where The Ladies of The 100 find their way in the world of Fear the Walking Dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clarke

Occasionally there are those moments of serene weightlessness where I’m caught in the balance just between sleeping and waking. The snarling and growling sounds of the infected swarming outside form a chorus of ambient sound. The cloudless night sky floods my space with starlight reminiscent of another time and place. It’s in those moments, for an all too fleeting respite that I forget. I forget all that I have lost. I forget all that humanity has lost. I remember only the sound of her saying my name or the way a strand of her hair would sometimes fall loose from her braid and tease at the soft line of her collar bone. 

 

But, the balance will always begin to shift. Maybe it will be the ever present hunger in my belly or the growing awareness of the musty smelling mattress I’m resting on for the night. Maybe I’ll start feeling the boots I’m still wearing because I don’t dare sleep without them on anymore. But, always something of this new life will begin to seep into my awareness.

 

I’ll will my brain to stay here another moment and squeeze my eyes closed tight against the truth of what they will find the moment they open. I’ll try once more to feel her against me and to wrap myself around her so tightly that this time she won’t fall away. I will try my hardest to hang on to her. Just one moment longer. Please. 

 

And just one time more I’ll dare to let my lips form around the sound of her name and whisper into the eternal. 

 

_Lexa_

 

 

——

 

“Clarke! Up! Come on, wake up!”

 

Octavia’s constant readiness to spring into action had always had a way of being really annoying. This morning it is making the ever present pounding in Clarke’s temples all the more unbearable. She rolls over pulling the crocheted blanket she is wrapped in up over her head despite the pungent aroma of whatever once died beneath it.

 

Her efforts at hiding are met with a thump of Octavia’s boot to her ribs. 

 

“Seriously, Clarke. We need to make a plan. We’re running out of food and Raven’s leg isn’t getting any better. We need to make some decisions here, Princess.”

 

 _“_ Octavia, just not…..please, not yet.” _,_ Clarke rasps, rubbing her rib cage, “I’m not ready.“

 

The sun streaming through the patterned gaps in the crochet feels like a knife in Clarke’s temple. She resigns herself to rousing only with the hope that maybe she still has some pain killers left in her pack for this unshakable headache. Stumbling her way across the room she finds the Percocet bottle she had scavenged a week ago from the medicine cabinet of a long gone stranger’s family. She pops a few and chases them with the remainder of the whiskey she’d stashed, letting the empty bottle fall to the floor with a thud. Sliding down after it she cradles her throbbing head in her hands.

 

“Pathetic.” Octavia scoffs. “I thought we agreed those pills were for Raven.”

 

“I just….I’ll get more. Ok?” 

 

She just needs a minute for the pills to kick in. Thud. Thud. Thud. The sound of the blood pulsing through her temples is the loudest sound in the room. Clarke knows without looking that Octavia is standing over her, glaring, incredulous, trying to stave off her own rising fears that she’s in this alone.  Clarke should look up at her, reassure her she’s got her back in all this. 

 

Instead she digs her fingertips further into her temples and rocks her body gently into the rhythm of her pounding blood vessels. She just needs the pills to kick in, damnit.

 

Octavia lets out a disdainful hiss and Clarke hears her footsteps heavy and fast crossing the room to grab her sword. She’d found it last week in someone’s basement and to no one’s surprise already wielded it like a natural extension of her arm.

 

“Sure, Clarke. I’m just gonna go out back right now and risk my life to get some more fresh water. But, hey, when I get back maybe I’ll drive you over to the corner drugstore and you can pick some up. Maybe a couple of pints of ice cream while you’re at it. We can have a little party later. How ‘bout that, Princess?”

 

Clarke keeps her gaze fixed on the floor as the sound of Octavia’s angry footsteps recedes. The clunk of the back door locks opening and the barricades sliding free follows shortly. True to form her unflappable friend has indeed set out to navigate the gauntlet of the undead to the hand pump well out back. It’s endless supply of fresh, clean water is what made this latest house such a treasure.

 

“Oh, how I hate it when mommy and daddy fight.” 

 

Raven’s voice is thin, just above whisper. But, it’s powerful enough to pull Clarke from her trance and send her scrambling to the couch to check on her injured friend.

 

“Hey? You’re awake? Do you need anything?” 

 

“A working leg would be nice….but I’ll settle for that ice cream.”

 

A week or so ago an unexpectedly larger than usual mob of the infected had trapped them in an alleyway. They had fled to the rooftops for safety but Raven’s thigh had been run clean through with an iron fence post as they had tried to get back down afterwards.

 

Clarke presses her fingertips into the flesh around the bandaged wound, checking for tenderness and the warm, hardened lumps that would signal spreading infection. Raven squeezes her eyes shut, breathing deeply and silently against the pain. Her wound is still regularly bleeding through the bandages. The brown corduroy couch Raven has spent her last several days resting on is now splotched and stained across it’s mid section with the pattern of dried blood. 

 

“Just ignore whatever you heard, Raven. You know O and I, we just..…” Clarke laces her fingers through Raven’s and gives her a weak smile in an attempt to reassure her. “…we’ll be fine. All of us.” 

 

Raven presses her thumb gently into the top of Clarke’s hand with a smirk and a wink to say she knows.

 

“Don’t worry about her, Griffin. I think she secretly likes getting to play ninja. And we both know she’s been waiting her whole life for an excuse to chop some heads off.”

 

Clarke laughs; not even being impaled by an iron stake at the end of the world could take the snark out of Raven Reyes. 

 

As if summoned, Octavia appears in the room, sword strapped over her back, laboring to keep the water from sloshing completely over the sides of the 20 quart steel pot they’d salvaged from the canning supplies in the root cellar.

 

When she sees the two friends smiling together on the couch her expression softens a little. 

 

“It’s still cold. Drink.” 

 

She holds up a mason jar full of water to Raven who gingerly pulls herself up to a sitting position and obeys without complaint despite her body’s clear unwillingness to cooperate. She sputters, dribbling water down the sides of her mouth. Octavia slides in behind her, supporting her to sit more upright and rubbing her back. 

 

“We need to clean and redress the wound, O.” 

 

Clarke digs through their bags gathering up her makeshift medical supplies. She and Octavia manage to get Raven’s pants pulled down and her wound undressed as painlessly as possible. Clarke washes it with soap and water, dabbing it dry with the cleanest towel they have. She douses it with a squirt bottle she’s filled with vodka. The ever stoic patient screams at the pain and Octavia wraps her arms tighter around her whispering reassurances in her ear. Finally, Clarke squeezes the contents of several honey packets over the wound before rewrapping it in the strips of a t-shirt they’d cut off for bandages.

 

Afterwards Raven lays cradled in the crook of Octavia’s arm, tears silently streaking her face. It’s clear to Clarke she needs more help. Raven’s still losing too much blood. She needs the wound stitched up. She needs real antibiotics. It’s also becoming clear that someone will need to go out to find these things soon. And they will need go alone. Raven could never survive the journey to find supplies and she won’t survive the wait here much longer without them.

 

Clarke feels a panic spreading up from her stomach. It grips hard at her lungs as they struggle to make use of the air in the room already so thick with the odor of the sweat and exhalations of the living mingled with the rotted stench of the dead. The room is badly in need of an open window and a cleansing spring breeze. But there is no opening of windows anymore, not in this world. She locks her jaw tight, trying to wrench back control over her body, counting through each breath slow and steady. She tells herself she can do this one more time. She can do the right thing to save her friends. This time could be different.

 

Back at Polis, the boarding school where the friends had all been dumped by their parents to right the course of their trouble making youth, there had been so many nights, drunk on a smuggled bottle of contraband liquor, when the band of friends had pledged their willingness to kill or die for one another. Silly, innocent pledges from kids really. They had just been kids who needed to feel a little less alone in the world. Kids who needed to feel like they belonged somewhere and to someone. 

 

But, over the last months those youthful pledges had turned into real choices. Who would you die for? Who would you kill for? That’s all that was left of the world now. Everything else, everyone else had become expendable.

 

And sometimes, Clarke had learned, the willingness to kill or die for someone still wasn’t enough.

 

“Guys, I’m gonna head out and go scavenging. I saw a cluster of buildings from the roof the other night. They’re maybe a few miles away.”

 

Clarke stands; the whiskey and the Percocet and her narrowly avoided panic attack hit her head all at the same time and she stumbles backwards tripping over a coffee table and landing on the floor with a bruising smack to her hip.

 

“You sure, Princess? You don’t seem in much better shape than me.” 

 

Raven’s eyes are soft and Clarke knows the concern in them is genuine but she hates being looked at that way. She’s always been the strong one. She’s always been to one to step up when a leader was needed. Falling apart is not an option.

 

She hops up from the floor, a move her newly bruised hip complains about, and mumbles something to Raven about how she’ll be fine. There is not much to pack really just a few bottles of water and her weapons. An empty bag is more useful when scavenging than anything. 

 

She takes the Percocet bottle from her bag and sets it on the coffee table next to Raven. She locks eyes with Octavia offering a silent ‘ _happy now?_ ’. But as she turns to leave Raven grabs hold of her wrist, her voice is gentle, just above a whisper, “Clarke, just do what you need to do to get back to us. Ok?” With that she slips the pill bottle back into Clarke’s hand.

 

Clarke stands frozen for a minute, with Raven’s hand squeezing hers, letting the silence between them give voice to everything they had run out of words to express. With that she grabs her things, wipes away a tear with her sleeve and heads for the back door. Octavia follows her helping to move the barricades across the back door. Finally, she levels a hand on Clarke’s shoulder, her voice lowered to a gruff whisper.

 

“Clarke, you better be sure you do everything you have to do to take care of things. You remember _this_ ….”, her finger circling between the two of them and back out towards Raven, “ _Us_ , is all we have now. It’s all the matters. You got it?” 

 

Octavia’s eyes do not move from hers. Her hands on Clarke’s shoulders tightening with each word as if her fingers alone can inject the gravity of her meaning into Clarke. Clarke swallows hard, nods.

 

“Trying to save the whole world won’t bring her back, Clarke. And trying to destroy yourself…..”, her eyes darting to the bottle of pills still clutched in Clarke’s hand, “….it doesn’t change what happened either.”

 

Clarke breaks her stare, her eyes darting to the ceiling to hold off the tears she feels coming at the very mention of her loss. She won’t give Octavia more evidence of her weakness. She deserves that much from Clarke at least.  

 

“Promise me, you’re up for this now, Clarke? Because if you aren’t back by tomorrow night Raven and I will have to go on without you. She can’t wait much more.”

 

 

——

 

It is just after sunset when Clarke reaches the small gathering of buildings she’d been headed towards. She made good time on her walk not running into any unwanted friends either living or dead. It helps that she’s traveling bare bones, just her mostly empty pack and her weapons; a baseball bat over her shoulder, a hatchet tucked into her belt, an the dagger strapped to her thigh. _Her_ dagger.

 

Crouching against the siding of the first building she is wishing she’d thought to throw something to eat in with her supplies. She hasn’t actually had anything since the pint of canned peaches she’d devoured yesterday morning at the farm house. There are a mix of 7 houses and a small store to go through and Clarke knows she has a full night ahead of her to search them all. 

 

She gives herself a final minute to sit and take in the night. There is a chorus of cicadas, their chirping rising and falling like the rhythm of summer itself. Cicadas. As if it was just any normal summer evening. As if at any minute she could turn and Lexa would be standing there holding out her hand and asking Clarke to take a walk with her in the woods behind Polis. Lexa, who the minute they were deep enough in the tree line to be out of view would pull Clarke into her arms nuzzling soft kisses into her neck that would leave Clarke feeling both light-headed and hungry for more.

 

Clarke strokes the dagger at her side absent-mindedly and pops open her Percocet bottle, shaking loose three pills, and downing them with a swig from her water bottle. She swaps the water bottle for the flashlight in her pack, takes a deep breath to steal herself for the task at hand, and heads for the first door. 

 

It was the smallest of the houses, just one story, no more than 2 bedrooms probably. She knocks hard on the door with her bat, listens, and waits for any occupants on the other side to make themselves known. Within a minute she hears the hissing and growling of the infected. Guessing from the sounds it can’t be more than two at most.

 

She twists the knob slowly surprised to find it unlocked and kicks the door the rest of the way open to release her company. The man and the woman who come limping and growling out were clearly elderly and Clarke can’t help but to be excited over the possibility of the pharmaceuticals she might find inside. She makes quick work of the couple driving her dagger with practiced precision into the temple of each, wiping the blade clean on the coat of the last and sliding it back into it’s sheath before stepping into the house and closing the door after her.

 

Clarke runs the flashlight quickly around the room catching sight of an end table, next to a recliner, covered with prescription pill bottles. Jackpot. She picks up a few and reads them but isn’t familiar with any of the names, so she sweeps them all into her bag as she searches out the bathroom.

 

The bathroom proves to be an even bigger gold mine and Clarke fills her bag half full with a triage center’s worth of first aid supplies. She tosses quickly through the medicine cabinet laughing at the thought that mouthwash and shaving cream were once things she would have concerned herself over. There are a few more pill bottles of unknown use, but nothing Clarke can recognize as an antibiotic or a pain killer.

 

Clarke starts to feel her vision blurring and feels a flashing through her skull like a strobe light left on inside her brain. She is beginning to regret taking so many Percocet on an empty stomach. Steadying herself against the walls she makes her way to the kitchen in search of something to fill her stomach.

 

She is bent over the utensil drawer, in search of a can opener when she first hears a sound like  the cocking of a gun behind her. She leans forward hands on the counter trying to focus her thoughts against the electrical storm playing out inside her head when she first feels the press of hard steel against the base of her skull. 

 

“You shouldn’t be here. You don’t belong here.” A woman’s voice, low and determined but with just the slightest hint of fear.

 

There is a sharp pain followed by what feels like an explosion bursting from the back of Clarke's head forward and everything fades to black.

 


	2. Clarke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke is scavenging to find much needed supplies for her friends and meets new friends.

One year ago….

“……hand loose on the blade, Clarke. Keep your wrist straight when you throw it. Like this.” Lexa’s hand smooths a slow path down Clarke’s outstretched arm, ending in her hand pointing towards the dead tree they were using as target practice for throwing Lexa’s dagger.

“It’s just like throwing a ball, Clarke. You should be pointing to the target when you release.”

Clarke thinks Lexa has clearly gotten confused somewhere along the way about Clarke’s athletic experience, but she conjures up her best impression of a major league pitcher and sends the blade flying. It spins lazily through the air before hitting the tree handle-first with a lackluster thud and dropping to the ground. 

She turns to Lexa with her best smile and shrugs. “No reflection on the teacher, I’m sure.”

“Again, Clarke.” Lexa retrieves the blade sending it with skilled precision an inch deep into the tree stump between them. “Skill comes on the back of hard work.”

Clarke can’t help but giggle. She loves the way Lexa is so intense and serious about absolutely everything she does. She especially likes it when what Lexa is doing is Clarke. 

She walks over to the stump, removes the knife, and takes a seat letting out a deep sigh. “How about we take a break.” She reaches a hand in invitation up towards Lexa, who can think of nothing in the world more inviting than Clarke Griffin. She lowers a knee on each side of the blonde and straddles her.

Lexa takes Clarke’s face in her hands, holding her gaze, studying her, as if she hadn’t already memorized every soft curve and edge that makes up the miracle of Clarke Griffin. She loves the two of them in this sacred place they’ve made for themselves in the woods behind their school. It’s the one place in the world Lexa ever feels safe enough to let her guard down. Though she thinks she’d probably feel that way anywhere she could be alone with Clarke.

“Ok, Lexa, now finish explaining to me why exactly a seventeen year old boarding school girl is hiding a dagger the size of my forearm and can throw it like an assassin?” She slides her hands just under the hem of Lexa’s shirt, her finger tips just grazing the curvature of the girl’s ribs. They give a slight catch and expansion as Lexa draws a quickened breath against Clarke’s touch. 

“Wait….” she pulls her face from Lexa’s hands leveling her most serious look at her. “….are you some sort of secret assassin planted here by the government? Cause that would be so hot, Lexa.”

The brunette laughs, leaning into her girlfriend and returning Clarke’s hands to their prior placement under her oxford. She gently pulls Clarke’s bottom lip up between her teeth. Her eyes, heavy-lidded and full of want, never break their hold on Clarke’s own. God, Clarke can never get enough of the intensity of this girl.  
“The story can be whatever you want it to be, Clarke.” Her voice is slow and deep and she’s running her hand through Clarke’s hair, taking a fistful and pulling her head back just enough to better expose her neck. The ache spreading through Clarke’s body reminds her of why she never quite ends up getting the full story of Lexa’s life before Polis out of her.

She takes Lexa by the wrists, pulling her hands into her lap before she loses her ability to fully form words. “For real, Lexa. I want to know about it. I want to know about you.”

Lexa sighs, caressing Clarke’s face. “It’s not that interesting, really, Clarke. My father liked camping and exploring the wilderness a lot. I accompanied him whenever he would let me. He taught me to throw knives as something we could to do together on our trips. I brought it with me because it reminds me of him and I keep it hidden out here. I come out and throw it sometimes when I wish to remember him.”

Clarke feels her own chest tighten looking at the ache in Lexa’s eyes. She has never looked so child-like and vulnerable in all the time Clarke has known her as she does right now attempting to look strong and stoic at the memory of her loss.

“Thank you for trusting me with that, Lexa. I know how hard that is for you.” Clarke runs her thumb along the tension that has formed in Lexa’s full lips. “And now I know I have your father to thank for having my own personal assassin to protect me.”

A smile breaks out across Lexa’s face at that. 

“Except Clarke Griffin has never been the kind of girl who needs anyone to protect her.” Lexa pulls back, the intensity returning to her gaze as she searches Clarke’s eyes for the answer to an unasked question. 

“That’s why I….” she catches the way Clarke’s eyebrows raise just slightly in anticipation, she swallows hard. “That’s why you’re you.”

———

Present day….

There was still a fuzzy haze around most of her view as Clarke finally rejoined the world. She felt her face pressed against cold tile and the grains of stray dirt and detritus wedged against her cheek. She felt a throbbing in the back of her head like all the pieces had cracked open and been shoved back together in the wrong places.

She was only beginning to become aware of the all too familiar pain gnawing her stomach when it rose with a fury up her throat and out of her body and she found herself splayed across an unfamiliar floor dry heaving. Her ribs clenched and swelled and what little she had left in her stomach hung wet from her lips.

She tried to piece together where she was. She remembered an elderly couple of undead she had laid to rest and left on the front porch. How long ago? Minutes? Hours? Days? Had they bitten her? No, there had been something else. But for now that something was lost as she tried to calm the retching of her body.

“Here. Try to drink when you’re able.” The hand of a woman, tall and lean, with her thick hair pulled back in braids, held the water bottle from Clarke’s pack out to her.

Right. Something else.

Clarke tried to focus better on the woman before her. Her face looked nervous but determined as she fidgeted with the handle of her gun and watched Clarke from across the room. She had Clarke’s own weapons and pack next to her. From her discomfort it was clear she was not accustomed to using that gun but Clarke knew without her own weapons, in her current physical state, and not knowing if there was anyone else with the woman, she’d never be able to fight her way out of this situation. She would need to find another way.

“I never meant to bother you. I was just hungry and I didn’t think anyone was here. If you just give me my stuff I’ll leave.”

The woman regarded her in silence for a while.

“If I did that I’m guessing you’d be back in a day with your friends and I’d be the one to die here instead.”

The implication that Clarke was still in danger was clear and sent a chill through her. She roused her ailing body upright on the floor in anticipation of whatever may be on the way. 

“No. Please. You’re wrong. I’m just on my own….have been for a while since I lost…..” her eyes flash to Lexa’s dagger in her pile of belongings. “….someone special to me. Just let me have her knife, please, that’s it. Keep the rest. I swear it’s just me. I was just hungry. I haven’t eaten for days.”

She sees the woman’s eyes soften to her pleas for a minute before she stiffens her back and a coldness slides back over her eyes.

“You mean the knife you used to kill my grandparents and leave them in a pile on the front porch?”

“Your grand-……? But they were…..” That’s when Clarke felt it, in that moment, the invisible cord of their common humanity connecting them together. The loss. The huge, agonizing, and unbearable loss that all the living these days bore. She collapsed back onto the floor under the weight of it all. 

“I’m so sorry.” It was a whisper. A prayer. The first genuine thing she’d said and it wasn’t necessarily even meant for her captor. “It gets so easy to forget that they were once…that they all mattered to someone at one time.” She looked up again to find soft eyes fixed on her own once more. 

“I’m Clarke.” She stood, offering her outstretched hand as she tentatively approached the woman. “Can we try this again?”

Her body quickly reminded her she was in no shape to be so active, the room spun, and she dropped to her knees a few steps from where she started. 

“Hey, take it easy.” The woman leapt to steady Clarke and help settle her into an overstuffed chair in the living room, her gun forgotten for the moment where she left it. 

“Remember I hit you pretty hard on the head last night, Clarke.” Her face softened into a smile finally. “I’m Niylah, by the way.”

Niylah stood, taking in the whole of the girl before her with the filthy torn clothing that hung loosely from her half-starved frame. Her blonde hair pulled back in a mess of a ponytail, grimy strands falling loose all around, framing what was an undeniably beautiful face, despite the dark circles that hung from the blue eyes.

“I’m going to run you a bath, Clarke, and then I’m going to head next door to our store and get you some food and something for your head. I’ll leave all your things where they are. I don’t think you’re in any shape to get very far, but if you want to run while I’m out that’s your choice.”

With that Niylah simply picked up her gun, sliding it between her back and waistband, and left the room. Clarke heard the sound of her turning the water on in the bathroom and then the opening and closing of the back door. Clarke quickly scrambled to retrieve her knife and then to the window to see where the woman had gone.

The morning sun over the tree tops seared a painful flash through her head. She caught a quick glimpse of Niylah unlocking a cinder block garage a few buildings away before the intensity of the light overwhelmed her and she stumbled back shutting the curtain to block it out. It’s clear Niylah is right; she’s not going to make it too far if she makes a run for it now.

With the energy she has left she makes her way to the bathroom. She is surprised to find there is warm water running into the tub and she gingerly strips her filthy clothing and slips in. Clarke closes her eyes and dips fully below the surface savoring the initial scorch as the water meets her skin, letting her limbs float weightless and unburdened until her chest burns for air and she is forced to surface, her hair heavy and dripping.

She soaks and scrubs until the water is blackened and cold. Niylah had left a nearly threadbare robe, presumably her grandmothers, out for Clarke. She wraps herself in it and feels warm and spent, as if she is emerging from an extended fever dream.

Clarke returns to the front room to find Niylah waiting, a plate of crackers, canned tuna fish, and an apple before her. Two white pills sit beside the plate. Niylah’s eyes widen and flutter rapidly in a quick moment of shock upon seeing the newly bathed blonde before her.

“I’m sorry it’s not more,” she says glancing towards the food, “they have us on rations…… not much left for throwing dinner parties.” She gestures for Clarke to take a seat. “The pills are Oxy…for the pain. I know your head must be throbbing.”

“It’s incredible.” Clarke reaches across the table as she takes a seat and gives Niylah’s hand a squeeze, noting the flush that spreads across the woman’s cheeks at her touch. “Really, thank you, Niylah.”

“It’s my pleasure, Clarke.” This time it’s Clarke’s turn to blush as she notices Niylah’s eyes tracing the line down the neckline of her robe which had fallen open slightly too far when she leaned over the table. Clarke quickly downs the pills and takes a few tentative bites of the crackers, mindful of both her desperate hunger and the waves of nausea that still rolled through her.

“You said they…..they have us on rations. Who is they, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Before all of this my family owned the store next door. We were just a neighborhood store that sold a little of everything, really. We tried to be as generous as we could with people in the beginning. We were sure it would all get sorted out eventually and everything could go back to business as usual. But the longer it went on the clearer it became that help wasn’t coming. Then one day they showed up…” her voice trailed off as she stared blankly into a world far from the one they both sat in presently. 

Clarke waited in silence. Everyone had a story these days.

“There were lots of men and lots of guns. They claimed everything we had as their own and even moved a supply of some other things into our store room. So now we trade for them and they protect us. Everything we have gets inventoried regularly to make sure we aren’t skimming anything. And they give us rations for food, toiletries, stuff like that.”

“So what exactly do they do if something goes missing?” 

Niylah turns back to Clarke at that, eyes firmly holding her gaze. “My dad has been out checking other people’s inventories with them for a few nights. I don’t know much about them beyond what little he’s told me. There is some guy named Jason, my dad says he ‘runs the show’ and if he finds something he doesn’t like he just has the people killed. Who’s going to stop him?”

Clarke is suddenly struck by what’s she is taking in. “Niylah…those pills…can you really give them to me?”

NIylah takes a deep breath and rises. She circles around behind where Clarke is seated and runs her fingers slowly through the wet and tangled mass of her hair.

“Let’s see if we can get this hair under control before it drys, Clarke.”

Clarke feels a shiver radiating out from each point of contact Niylah’s finger tips make. She lets her eyes drift closed, taking in a slow, deep breath as she feels the muscles in her neck giving way to the expert hands rubbing at the base of her skull. She wants to trust that this is something real, something genuine and selfless at a time when self-interest means survival. But she can’t.

“Why are you helping me, Niylah?”

The fingers freeze in place. The voice is distant. Pained.

“Because when all this started my mother was away visiting someone and maybe if I’m here helping you maybe there’s someone out there helping her.”

They sit in the still and the silence for a time lingering over past memories. The air between them is heavy with what is being said and what is not. Niylah’s fingers begin moving tentatively once more through Clarke’s hair, gently releasing any tangles they meet.

“You said you’d lost someone too, Clarke. Tell me about her.” 

Clarke tenses at the thought of Lexa. Shame burns through her, hot and furious, over the pleasure she is feeling from the touch of the wrong fingers trailing down her scalp. “Niylah, would you mind not talking?” she snaps attempting to push back the onslaught of feelings she feels powerless to stop.

The fingers in her hair stop their ministrations and slowly withdraw. Clarke feels their loss like an ache; her head falling back in an attempt to regain their touch. Clarke wants this. She wants to lose herself in the touch of a stranger and remember when her body could feel something beyond hunger, pain, and exhaustion. She wants to escape into the feeling of the wrong lips against her skin. She wants to know the feel of these wrong fingers thrusting and curling inside of her. She wants to let go and give in to this.

Clarke turns, looking up and meeting the girl’s gaze, now sunken with embarrassment and rejection. “No,” Clarke quickly interjects retrieving Niylah’s hand in her own. Their eyes still locked in silent conversation, Clarke places their hands on her chest moving them slowly up under the lapel of her robe and laying them to rest on the swell of her breast.

When their lips meet it’s hungry and desperate. Their kisses miss as often as they find each other in their unfamiliarity. Frantic hands slide Clarke’s robe open leaving it hanging from the chair where she still sits. The tips of finger nails dig into newly exposed skin trailing shivers around the curve of her shoulder blades and down her spine. Strong hands clasp Clarke’s rib cage arching her back and pulling her up to meet the waiting lips of the girl on her knees between Clarke’s legs. 

Niylah’s mouth searches Clarke’s body in a frenzy without rhythm or pattern, pulling taut skin between her teeth, raising nipples with broad strokes of her tongue, and trailing a line down her belly with alternating flicks from the tip of her tongue and wet lipped kisses. When she reaches the insides of Clarke’s thighs she slows beginning to spread her legs open with deep, languid attentions that leave Clarke’s skin purpled and tender in her wake.

Clarke grips the arms of the chair as she feels herself coming unmoored. She knows she does’t have the strength to hold herself off for long. Her breath is already rasping and catching in her chest as Niylah looks up, her eyes asking permission which Clarke eagerly grants with a nod. 

The sensation of Niylah’s tongue against her clit is so warm and familiar that Clarke feels a rush of memory ghosting the entirety of her body like the embodiment of ache itself pulsing through her veins. Her thoughts come in fragments, slipping away as quickly as they arrive before her body reaches its limits and she tumbles over her edge in a final burst of release. 

She turns her head to the side trying to hide the tears she quickly wipes away with her numb and trembling hands. If Niylah notices she says nothing.

——  
Clarke wakes bolting upright in a breathless panic. She looks around her, desperately trying to take in her surroundings and make sense of where she is. Her swiftly pounding heart begins sinking into her stomach as she contemplates the naked body of the stranger curled, sleeping under the sheet at her side. Clarke’s kiss bruised lips and the soreness inside her remind her she’s taken one more step away from everything that once mattered to her.

She slides her hand over the swollen lump on the back of her head. The Oxycodone Niylah had given her previously before had worn off and the familiar throbbing of her head had returned along with the nausea and dizziness.

She made her way to her discarded clothing and then to her bag in search of the Percocet Raven had sent with her. It wasn’t there and neither were any of the other pill bottles she had scavenged when she had first arrived.

A dizzying fury began to rise in Clarke. She gathered up her empty bag and her weapons, re-strapping Lexa’s dagger to her thigh and feeling a momentary reassurance to have it at her side once more. She made her way quietly to Niylah’s discarded clothing slipping the keys from her pocket and tucking the gun into her waistband.

Clarke sneaks quietly out the back door, her eyes taking a minute to adjust in the moonless night, and makes her way to the cinder block building she had seen Niylah unlocking previously. She struggles to balance her flashlight under her chin as her hands fumble clumsily with the keys in the lock, her dizziness growing stronger with each movement.

Once inside she finds rows of shelves stocked like a super market. Clarke hasn’t seen so much bounty since the world fell part. She moves through the supplies with the precision of months of well honed scavenging technique, adding the items that have the most value and nothing more as she still has to carry it all on her back to get it home to her friends. 

Then she sees it. The motherlode she was hoping to find. A shelf stocked with pill bottles. She scans quickly, finding several prescription antibiotics, the Oxycodone bottle Niylah had taken from the day before, and there tucked in the corner is the Percocet bottle she’d brought with her. She makes quick work of filling her bag, leaves the keys behind in the door, and makes her way into the night hoping she can still find her way back to Octavia and Raven in the dark.

“CLARKE! NO!“ 

She turns at the sound of the shouts. Niylah stands wrapped in a sheet, clinging to the doorway. She makes no move to chase Clarke down.

“Please don’t do this, Clarke.” Her voice falls to a whispered plea. “Jason will kill us. He’ll kill all of us, Clarke.”

Instinctively at first, Clarke takes a step back towards the woman. She thinks of Raven back at the house so desperately in need of the medicine she now holds in her pack. She thinks of Octavia making her promise not to be weak and to put the three of them first. At any cost.

She turns again and runs as fast as she can manage into the night. Her body is still spent and weak and her head spinning faster and faster. She knows she can’t make it all the way home but she hopes to put as much distance between her and everything she’s just done as possible before her body gives out.

——

She’s awake. Aware. At least she thinks she is. She can’t quite manage to open her eyes yet. And she’s so tired. If she could just sleep a little longer. 

“We have to get her in the truck. Help me. What the hell is the matter with you guys!”

“She’ll be dead by morning if she’s not already. You’re not bringing that in my truck.”

If those voices would just quiet down a little, Clarke thought. She just needed a few more minutes to sleep. She wasn’t quite ready yet.

“We can’t just leave her here! She’ll be killed.”

“Honey stop. He’s right. She’s half dead already. You just can’t save everyone. Get back in the truck please.”

Clarke feels a tugging at her shoulders, a hand cradling her head. Why won’t they just let her sleep? She forces her eyes open just enough to see the sun spreading in rays from behind the face of the girl 6 inches from her own. Her lips are full and her eyes are the deep mossy green of the Polis woods. She feels familiar. She feels like home. She feels real and she feels like a dream.

“Lexa?”

“See, what’d I tell you? Half crazy, half dead. Let’s go, Alicia.”

“Victor, No. We can at least give her a chance.”

Clarke feels herself being lowered back onto the ground. She closes her eyes again. It’s too hard to stay awake. She wants to sleep a bit more. She wants to keep dreaming of Lexa. She hears shouting. She hears growling. She hears feet. Running. Frantic.

Then she is wet. Everywhere. There are fingers spreading something across her face, her body, and a stench. Her eyes shoot open as she nearly wretches at the smell. She finds herself again face to face with this vision of her lost love. Her lost love, who is covered in blood and entrails. They both are. 

Clarke gasps against this living nightmare returned to her. She reaches to wipe the blood from her cheek, a soft ‘no’ barely above a whisper is all she can manage. But the eyes on hers are gentle.

“I know it’s gross but the blood of the infected will protect you. They won’t touch you if you keep it on. I promise.”

She stands and walks towards the truck at the side of the road. Clarke can’t lose her again. She struggles to get up and fails, nothing more than a feral moan escaping her lips as she watches the love of her life fixing her with one final soft-eyed gaze.

“It’s okay. You’re safe.”

And she is gone.


End file.
